In recent years there has occurred at all levels of government the enactment of laws and regulations directed toward protecting and cleaning up the environment. One problem to which these environmental laws have been directed is the prevention and clean up of soil which has become contaminated through intentional and unintentional spilling of a variety of chemical wastes by individuals, businesses and industries. The tremendous increase in the manufacturing segment of our economy in the last several decades have contributed a substantial amount of contamination to the environment. For example, the many service stations providing fuel and other petroleum products and related services for vehicles having resulted in the spillage of materials containing hydrocarbons that contaminate the soil. The operation of and waste disposal by chemical and petro chemical plants has resulted in similar soil contamination. Also, accidental spills resulting from truck and rail transport accidents contaminate the soils on public and private right of ways. If these contaminants are not removed from the soil, they eventually may leach into the groundwater and create further environmental problems that are difficult if not impossible to remedy. In order to properly protect the environment from further damage, it is essential that these contaminants be removed promptly upon discovery, and many of the laws at local, state and federal levels are forcing landowners and others to take all possible steps to remove these contaminants.
At the present time, contaminated sites are subject to stringent regulations regarding the removal and disposal of contaminated soil. Soil known to be contaminated often must be excavated, and the contaminated soil transported to landfills which have been designated to receive the contaminated soil. The soil excavated from the original contaminated site must of course be replaced with soil that is contamination free. This excavation and replacement procedure is an expensive and time consuming process. More importantly, this procedure for cleaning up the environment does not solve the contamination problem, but merely moves the contaminated soil from one site to a different site, a designated land fill, where it will hopefully do less harm. However, the overall environment remains contaminated, and in the process of removing the contaminated soil and transporting it to these designated landfills, the environment is exposed to further contamination. More importantly, the soil remains in a contaminated state, and poses future problems for the area of the landfill and the surrounding environment. Moreover, because of the limited number of available sites for depositing these hazardous substances, and because those owning property in the vicinity of the sites vigorously object to them, the replacement solution to the problem is less satisfactory and may in the long range create more problems than it solves. Other treatment methods for removing contamination from soils have proven to be even more expensive, intractable or ineffective.
Thus, there is a need for a method of cleaning the contaminated soil at the original contaminated site and returning the cleansed soil back to the ground in a contamination free state. The method of cleansing the soil should be considerably less costly than the known prior art methods to encourage individuals to clean up their property and the method should remove the contaminants from the soil not simply removing the soil and transporting it to another disposal site without eliminating the contamination from the soil.